We’ve welcomed visitors from 57 countries and 48 U.S. states so far

By David McElroy · July 8, 2011

I’ve been pleasantly surprised at just how far-flung the audience for this site has been so far. It was just eight weeks ago today when I opened the digital doors to the place, but people have already made thousands of visits from 57 different countries around the world.

There have also been visitors from 48 of the 50 U.S. states, plus the District of Columbia. Vermont and South Dakota have been the only two U.S. states missing for weeks. What are you guys waiting for?

Even though I can’t personally identify who comes to visit or exactly where you’re coming from or anything of that nature, the system does give me general information. For instance, I know that the U.S. state sending the most visitors is Alabama, which makes sense considering that I live here and lots of people here known me.

After my home state, the top 10 U.S. states in numbers of visits so far have been Texas, New York, Florida, California, Tennessee, Ohio, Virginia, Indiana and Pennsylvania. (Massachusetts barely missed the cut.)

From around the world, here are the countries represented so far, in order of the number of visits: United States, Italy, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Paraguay, Ireland, Spain, India, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, Uruguay, Egypt, Russia, South Africa, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Netherlands, Argentina, Guatemala, Denmark, France, South Korea, Malaysia, Finland, Sweden, Serbia, Philippines, Portugal, Czech Republic, Nepal, Bahrain, Belgium, Taiwan, Indonesia, Ecuador, Lebanon, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Romania, Fiji, Bolivia, Chile, Pakistan, Norway, Israel, Algeria, China, Costa Rica, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Bangladesh and Venezuela.

I have to be honest and tell you that I’ve been stunned and very, very happy to see you guys from far away from me. I mean, it’s one thing when my friends and family show up, because I can sort of guilt them into taking a look. But you folks in Fiji and Nepal and Slovakia weren’t high on my list of countries to expect visitors from. Thank you for proving that my vision was too small.

I sincerely appreciate everyone who’s taken the time to read anything I’ve written over the last eight weeks. Thanks to those who’ve clicked on ads along the way, because doing that — for things you’re interested in — contributes a few dollars through ad sales to pay the costs of the site. I also appreciate those of you who’ve made comments and sent me personal email. (If you’ve written and I haven’t replied, please forgive me. I’m behind on answering everyone.) It’s humbled me that enough people have cared about what I’m doing to check it out even once, much less come back again and again, as so many people have done.

I’ve been introduced to some amazing people because of this site and I’ve run into people who are just as interested as I am in changing the world for the better and building competitive governance in the post-statist world. I’m appreciative for the people I’ve met, and I’m looking forward to seeing who comes to my attention next.

Thank you for your support. I’m very grateful that you keep coming back. And if you know anyone in Vermont or South Dakota, ask ’em to log on here soon, please. I’d like to finish coloring in my map.

Share on Social Networks

On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

Related Posts